Truce thinking and just war theory Breen, K. (2017). Truce thinking and just war theory. Journal of Global Ethics, 13(1), 14-27. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2017.1324510 Published in: Journal of Global Ethics Document Version: Peer reviewed version Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal Publisher rights © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected]. Download date:01. Oct. 2021 Truce Thinking and Just War Theory Keith Breen1 School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Politics, Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. [email protected] Abstract In his book, A Theory of Truces, Nir Eisikovits offers a perceptive and timely ethics of truces, based on the claim that we need to reject the ‘false dichotomy between the ideas of war and peace’ underpinning much current thought about conflict and conflict resolution. In this article, I concur that truces and ‘truce thinking’ should be a focus of concern for any political theory wishing to address the realities of war. However, Eisikovits’s account, to be convincing, requires engagement with a tradition of thought figuring only marginally in his reflections on truces, that is, just war theory. I argue this for three reasons. Without incorporation of the just war principles that should inform the decisions to enter conflict, to maintain conflict, and to cease conflict, any theory of truces will be, first, normatively inadequate, failing to provide us with requisite direction, and, second, open to the charge of permitting intolerable injustices, a charge Eisikovits wishes to avoid. Third, engagement with just war theory is important for arriving at a nuanced understanding of peacemaking, one which grants truces their place in our deliberations and spurns simplistic ‘war versus peace’ binaries whilst keeping more ambitious ideals of peace firmly in sight. Keywords 1 Published in The Journal of Global Ethics, 17 May 2017 (ID: 1324510 DOI:10.1080/17449626.2017.1324510). 1 truces, just war, peace, peacemaking Introduction How should we think about truces? Should we view truces as mere gaps in fighting, temporary moments of little significance in themselves when compared to the end we ought to seek in war, namely, a durable, stable peace? Or should we, instead, think of them more constructively, as accommodations we should cultivate, embrace, and sometimes prefer over attempts to realize a lasting peace? These are the questions addressed by Nir Eisikovits in his book A Theory of Truces (2016). In addressing them, he argues we need to reject the ‘false dichotomy between the ideas of war and peace’ that he believes underpins current thought about conflict and conflict resolution.2 Encouraging us to think that the alternative to war is solely a comprehensive peace, this dichotomy blinds us to the importance of arrangements – cease-fires, armistices, strategies of avoidance, constrained belligerence, provisional compromises, et cetera – which lie between the poles of war and peace. We must attend to these arrangements, Eisikovits asserts, not only because they reflect more accurately how most violent conflicts actually wind down, but also because the dogged pursuit of comprehensive peace settlements oftentimes puts us ‘at risk of fighting longer and harder than we have to’ (TT, 7). If we care about minimizing the horrors of war, we must begin to take truces seriously. I agree with Eisikovits that truces should be a focus of concern for any political theory wishing to address the realities of war. I also see much wisdom in Eisikovits’s explicitly normative theory of truces, which he develops through careful analysis of what he terms the 2 Eisikovits (2016, 2). Hereafter cited as TT. For his earlier analyses of truce thinking, see Eisikovits (2013, 2015). 2 five basic ‘philosophical and psychological commitments’ of ‘truce thinking’ and assessment of such thinking in the light of historical cases (TT, 3). He is right to emphasize the messiness of many wars, the impossibility of implementing comprehensive peace agreements in all instances, and the need for practical judgement based upon close attention to individual political contexts. However, Eisikovits’s account, to be convincing, requires engagement with a tradition of thought that figures only marginally in his reflections on truce thinking, that is, just war theory. I argue this here for three reasons. Without incorporation of the just war principles that should inform the decisions to enter conflict, to maintain conflict, and to cease conflict, any theory of truces will be, first, normatively inadequate, failing to provide us with requisite direction, and, second – and more worryingly – open to the charge of permitting intolerable injustices, a charge Eisikovits is keen to avoid. Third, engagement with just war theory is important for arriving at a nuanced understanding of peacemaking, one which grants truces their appropriate place in our deliberations and spurns simplistic ‘war versus peace’ binaries whilst nevertheless keeping more ambitious ideals of peace firmly in sight. I begin my discussion, in the first section, by setting out the main assumptions and claims of Eisikovits’s theory of truces. In the second section, I explain why we should concur with him on the need to take truces seriously and what I believe we can learn from his account. I then move, in section three, to argue that truce thinking is deficient without guidance from just war principles. In the fourth section, I maintain that the just war view of peacemaking proves a valuable resource in reflecting on the resolution of violent conflict and that Eisikovits himself, despite his classical-realist outlook, gives implicit articulation to that view. Eisikovits on truce thinking 3 Although self-consciously modest in its goals, Eisikovits’s theory of truces has a broad focus, requiring reconsideration of how we approach conflict across all its stages. The mode of thought or attitude displayed by genuine truce thinkers, he contends, is just as crucial to the periods preceding conflict, as exemplified by Burke in his exhortations to the British Parliament in the immediate lead up to the American Revolutionary War, as it is during moments of actual conflict, as shown by Camus’s call for a ‘civilian truce’ during the Algerian War of Independence. It is crucial, likewise, in periods directly succeeding conflict when guns may be silent but antagonism and distrust endure, as embodied in the ‘Pact of Forgetting’ that enabled Spain’s gradual transition to democracy.3 What unites truce thinking across these different moments is its commitment to ‘a straightforward moral principle: economizing on the costs of war’ through calculated moderation and reduction of conflict (TT, 29). And it furthers that aim by attending to what is feasible in moments of contention, rather than aspiring to surmount all hostility and institute a far-reaching, just peace. The key obstacle to recognizing the value of truce thinking, according to Eisikovits, is the regrettable truth that ‘Western political philosophy’, as well as Western political practice, ‘has so far neglected, marginalized, or completely rejected this way of thinking’ (TT, 27). This is because both philosophers and practitioners have been in thrall to a ‘war/peace dichotomy’ that has stunted our political imagination and constricted our normative vocabulary.4 The source of this dichotomy is the liberal cosmopolitan vision of international 3 For Eisikovits on Burke, see Eisikovits (TT, 4, 88–94); on Camus, see Eisikovits (TT, 3, 22– 23); on the Spanish ‘Pact of Forgetting’, see Eisikovits (TT, 100–107). 4 Eisikovits (TT, 41). Among the practitioners cited as enthralled by this dichotomy are the Liberal peer Viscount Bryce, chair of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages established under Asquith in 1914, US Secretary of State Robert Lansing in Wilson’s World War I administration, President Roosevelt at junctures during World War II, and the Israeli 4 order born in the Enlightenment and given clearest expression by Kant in his Perpetual Peace (1795). Buoyed by the belief that war can be eliminated from the human condition, Kant and his heirs deem the only meaningful alternative or conclusion to war a peace that is agreed according to shared norms of conduct and in which mutual recognition and the rights of all parties are affirmed. From this demanding perspective, every accommodation short of permanent peace necessarily appears morally suspect, a ‘“mere cessation of arms”’ or ‘“patched-up compromise”’ unworthy of our attention (TT, 2, 12, 16). Resting on the binary assumption that either we have permanent peace or a state of war, Kantian cosmopolitanism restricts the options permitted to us and fails to give the realities of human conflict their due. For Eisikovits, one reality neglected under this vision is the truth emphasized by Freud (1930), that war and conflict are ‘too irresistible to be eliminated,’ will always be part of the human condition on account of their enduring ‘allure’ and our innate bellicosity (TT, 17–19). Another is that very few wars have ended or are likely to end in a manner conducive to cosmopolitan principles.